Chapter 47: Political Storm

At that moment, Chen Ying was like a child watching a swarm of ants tumble into a pit, with a pile of sand at hand. He could not help thinking of pushing the sand over to bury them.

The thought startled him. He had no idea why such an impulse had come over him. It had not been part of the plan. Was it some evil lurking in his heart? And yet, when the thought arose, it seemed so natural.

With a wave of his hand, he could sentence several thousand people to death. What immense power that was—wicked, perhaps, but also intoxicating. Suddenly, Chen Ying understood a little why men like Xiang Yu and Bai Qi had committed such terrible atrocities. Perhaps it had not been merely a military necessity. Perhaps some buried impulse of the mind had played its part, too.

Fortunately for the prisoners, they were not about to be buried alive. The Tang army had driven them here only because escape would be difficult.

But as Chen Ying looked down at the more than thirty thousand people packed together below, he found himself unable to decide what to do.

Bury them alive?

Perhaps it really would be the simplest way to solve the problem once and for all.

The various tribes feared force, not virtue. In the second year of Longshuo, 662, Xue Rengui led Tang troops against the Tiele at the Tianshan Mountains. The Tiele sent dozens of generals to challenge him. Xue Rengui rode out alone to face them, loosed three arrows, and killed three of their commanders, each tumbling from his horse. The enemy army fell into confusion at once. Xue Rengui seized the moment, ordered his troops to pursue and attack, and before long the enemy surrendered. Since the Tiele had harassed the Tang frontier for decades, Xue Rengui ordered the surrendered soldiers buried alive on the spot, to eliminate the threat once and for all.

In the first year of Yongchun, 682, Ashide Yuanzhen, an official overseeing surrendered tribes under the Shanyu Protectorate, whose seat was northwest of present-day Helingeer in Inner Mongolia, defected to Ashina Gudulu, who had proclaimed himself khagan of the Turks. Ashide Yuanzhen invaded Bingzhou, present-day Taiyuan in Shanxi, and the northern frontier of the Shanyu Protectorate, then pushed into Yunzhou. Xue Rengui was ordered to put down the invasion.

The Turks asked, “Who is the Tang commander?”

“Xue Rengui,” came the reply.

“We heard General Xue was exiled to Xiangzhou and died there. How can he have come back to life?”

Xue Rengui removed his helmet and showed himself to them. The Turks took a closer look and turned pale with shock. They dismounted and lined up to bow to him, then gradually began to flee. Xue Rengui pressed the advantage, pursued them, and routed their army. He killed more than ten thousand and captured over twenty thousand—some accounts say thirty thousand—while seizing more than thirty thousand camels, horses, and cattle. It was a great victory at Yunzhou.

Bury them alive, and forge an invincible reputation for himself! Chen Ying felt a surge of excitement at the thought. Just as he was about to raise his hand and give the order, he saw a Turkic woman holding a small child in her arms. The child was wailing.

At the sight, Chen Ying’s heart softened again. He could never become Xue Rengui, a general whose enemies surrendered at the mere rumor of his approach.

Chen Ying roared, “Do you want to spend the rest of your lives as slaves?”

Du Shanguo translated his words into Turkic. At Chen Ying’s question, the prisoners shook their heads in unison.

“Then I’ll show you a way out!” Chen Ying continued. “There are eleven coal mines, large and small, near Lingzhou. You’ll be assigned to them. Ten households will make a unit, ten units a fort, and ten forts a settlement. You’ll be divided into thirty-three settlements in all. You can dig or transport coal—I don’t care how you do the work. The three settlements that dig the most, the fastest, will receive my pardon. Their people will be freed from slavery and entered into the Tang registers as white-register households!”

The white register was one category in the Tang household registration system. Tang households were divided into nine grades: upper-upper, upper-middle, upper-lower; middle-upper, middle-middle, middle-lower; and lower-upper, lower-middle, lower-lower. Outside those nine grades stood the white register, so called because its records were written on white paper. It was used specifically for the incorporated tribes. Above the white register was the yellow register. The word “yellow” had nothing to do with the imperial clan; it simply denoted a higher level of registration. Those on it could be considered free farmers, merchants, artisans, and the like.

In a sense, holding a white register in the Tang Empire was almost like possessing a green card in the America of later ages. Those registered in white still enjoyed the protection of the Tang army and remained subject to Tang law.

The prisoners erupted in excitement. Almost none could hide their emotion. To become subjects of the Tang—even under the white register—meant the chance, at the five-year review, to be transferred to the yellow register, provided they broke no laws, paid taxes as required, and kept a clean record. They could finally live a decent life.

Chen Ying went on, “If you dare to mutiny or flee, you’ll be executed on the spot if caught! Anyone who reports someone trying to escape or stir up trouble will receive ten dan of grain!”

Chen Ying’s offer set paradise against hell.

From that day onward, the eleven mines outside Lingzhou began producing coal at a furious pace. The Turkic prisoners all worked as if their lives depended on it. Before long, Lingzhou had replaced charcoal and firewood entirely with coal. The city consumed coal far more slowly than the mines produced it. Piles of coal grew ever larger inside Lingzhou, until there was scarcely room left for them.

Seeing the thick smoke drifting everywhere and steam rising throughout the city, Yang Ze began to wonder whether every street and alley in Lingzhou might be fitted with heated brick beds, so people would not feel the cold even outdoors.

When he heard Yang Ze’s wild idea, Chen Ying hurriedly put a stop to it.

Yang Ze might actually have done it.

“However much coal we have, we can’t waste it like that,” Chen Ying said. “Here’s what we’ll do. I’ve looked through the Lingzhou county records and found that the region produces a great deal of iron. We’ll assign some of the Turkic prisoners to mine iron, and use the surplus coal for smelting.”

“How can coal be used to smelt iron?” Though Yang Ze knew little about steelmaking, he did know that iron had to be smelted with charcoal—and the finest willow charcoal, at that. It was basic knowledge.

In fact, that piece of ancient wisdom was wrong. Chen Ying, after all, had received a higher education in the modern world. He knew that coal contained many harmful impurities, which could damage the quality of iron and steel. In later times, neither iron nor steel was smelted directly with coal. Instead, people used coke, which was much purer and suitable for smelting both.

Building a blast furnace was not particularly complicated. During the Great Leap Forward of the late 1950s, the whole country had been urged to produce iron and steel. Some primary school students, villagers from production brigades, and salesclerks from food shops had even formed smelting teams and built blast furnaces. In theory, those furnaces could produce iron; in practice, most efforts came to nothing because the people involved lacked the necessary technical skill.

Chen Ying found Lin Chuanfu and described the blast furnace as best he could from memory.

As a professional, Lin Chuanfu quickly identified two technical problems they would face: firebrick and bellows.

Firebrick was made by firing refractory clay or other heat-resistant materials. Usually pale yellow or brownish, it was used to line smelting furnaces and could withstand temperatures of 1,580 to 1,770 degrees Celsius. Types included fireclay brick, high-alumina brick, silica brick, and magnesia brick.

Chen Ying knew of high-alumina, silica, and even magnesia brick, but he knew only their names; he had never seen what they looked like. What was more, chemical elements were still an entirely unexplored field in this era. Finding the right materials would not be easy.

But Chen Ying was not deterred. He assigned the army to train the men under Wei Wenzhong, Gao Yunquan, and He Yuejing, while he and Lin Chuanfu led a group of craftsmen in conducting experiments.

That was right: Chen Ying chose a clumsy method, testing different kinds of clay over and over.

As Chen Ying made preparations for a major iron and steel operation in Lingzhou, the report of his victory there reached Chang’an.

He had no idea that this butterfly from another world had stirred up a political storm in Chang’an.